Revista Română de Geografie Politică Year XII, no. 2, November 2010, pp. 411-427 ISSN 1454-2749, E-ISSN 2065-1619 Article no. 122118-188 THE ROLE OF RURAL SETTLEMENTS OCCUPYING A CENTRAL POSITION IN THE ELABORATION OF THE STRATEGIES OF TERRITORIAL MANAGEMENT. CASE STUDY THE SOUTHWESTERN DEVELOPMENT REGION Daniel PEPTENATU University of Bucharest- Interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Researches on Territorial Dynamics (CICADIT), 36-46 M. Kogalniceanu St., Bucharest, Romania, e-mail: [email protected] Radu PINTILII University of Bucharest- Interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Researches on Territorial Dynamics (CICADIT), 36-46 M. Kogalniceanu St., Bucharest, Romania, e-mail: [email protected] Alina PEPTENATU University of Bucharest, 36-46 N. Bălcescu St., 36-46, Bucharest, Romania, e-mail: [email protected] Cristian DRĂGHICI University of Bucharest- Interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Researches on Territorial Dynamics (CICADIT), 36-46 M. Kogalniceanu St., Bucharest, Romania, e-mail: [email protected] Abstract: There are many directions of action regarding the increase of the functionality of administrative mechanisms. One of them is supporting the development of some territorial management structures of the type of polycentric networks of human settlements, able to ensure the efficient diffusion of development, starting from the level of coordination centres and continuing up to the local level. Creating some development models, based on polycentric structures, is a main preoccupation of the European decision factors, who, once the European Union has been enlarged, confront with an increase of the development gaps in territorial profile. Building these models supposes a series of difficulties at the local level, where it is difficult to identify territorial systems, able to diffuse development within the settlements network. The polycentric development model includes human settlements, each of them having a certain capacity of subordinating areas, where they occupy a central position. The estimation of the polarization capacity represents a complex step, frequently applied in specialised literature for the superior levels, where the effects within the subordinate areas are obvious. The methodology of analyzing the role of the settlements with a central position within consolidation has been elaborated and developed within some projects of fundamental scientific research (Territorial management based on the theory of development poles (PNII), Production controlled by discontinuities and treatment of the areas being at a high disadvantage and the Interface urban-rural in the context of polycentric development) financed by CNCSIS. http://rrgp.uoradea.ro 412 Daniel PEPTENATU, Radu PINTILII, Alina PEPTENATU, Cristian DRĂGHICI Key words: centrality, rural settlements, polycentric network, territorial management, decentralization * * * * * * INTRODUCTION The elaboration of the development strategies, correlated to the decentralization process, represent important priorities of the decision factors at European level today. The spatial projection of this process has the form of some polycentric networks, where it appears a transfer of institutional responsibilities from central level to regional, county and local level, on well established directions. Concretely, the polycentric development model spatially projects the directions which the decentralization process should follow, in order to obtain an optimate territorial functionality. Hallgeir Aalbu (2004) considers the settlements network represents the spinal column of a territorial-polycentric system, ensuring the efficient and uniform transfer of development, at the entire territory level. The same idea appears in Gudrun Haindl and Petra Hirschler’s work (2008). They consider polycentric development can contribute to the balanced economic development and to the reduction of territorial disparities at the European Union’s level. The elaboration of this polycentric development model contributes to the increase of the functionality of administrative mechanisms, by means of the spatial projecting of some efficient information diffusion channels between the development poles, which could ensure a balanced territorial development, this representing a declared objective of decentralization policies, aiming at the transfer of a series of responsibilities from the central level to the local structures. At the inferior level, the polycentric model comprises growth centres identified depending on their centrality in the local settlements system. Identifying the settlements with a central position has a special importance in the elaboration of territorial management strategies, because it offers the decision factors a clear image upon the support points in constructing polycentric networks, at inferior levels. The concept of centrality first appeared in 1933, when it was used by Walter Cristaller for the enunciation of the central places theory, and it was defined as the property of a town to offer goods and services to an exterior population that lives in the complementary region of the town. Depending on the services offered, the cost and the request for products, the dimension of the influence area, there are several levels of centrality. The inductive and general theory of central places explains the size, number and especially the distribution of towns, the author considering that town defines itself by its capacity of offering goods and services to a surrounding area. In time, the concept became general and extended itself, and it characterises any place which offers services and thus polarizes a clientage. In a larger acceptance, the term of centrality can reflect the more or less accessible position of a knot within a settlements network. There can be two types of central position within a network: that which minifies the sum of distances from a knot to the others (the optimal localization of the trader) and that which minifies the maximal distance between a knot and the other knots The Role of Rural Settlements Occupying a Central Position in the Elaboration… 413 within the network (the perfect localization for the emergency-ambulance services, fire brigades). Dauphine A. (2003) affirms that centrality is not determined by localization, but by the consolidation of a certain function, which imposes the place within the settlements local system. The term of centrality was also used in Geography by Rochefort M. (1960), Dugrand R. and Labasse J. (1964), Hautreux (1963), and in the field of regional Geography, Juillard E. introduced the concept of polarized region (1962), whereas George P. (1967) made a presentation of the hexagon, opposing the polarized spaces to the inorganic. Today, the term is frequently used by other human sciences, as sociology, which uses it in order to show a deterioration of social contrasts within an entity, while S. Sassen speaks about social polarization in order to label social dynamics within the global city (1996). With the exception of spatio-temporal criteria, used for evaluating accessibility, other criteria can be taken into consideration: economic, aesthetic, touristic, lanscape criteria, environment criteria etc. The relative importance of the accessibility explanatory components can be measured by means of a set of indicators, which are often complementary. Thus, the accessibility level is closely related to measurement criteria. However, accessibility is not only limited to people’s circulation, but it can also refer to information circulation through telecommunications network, where accessibility to a knot is very important for the quality of information exchange. After Pumain D. and Offner J.M. (1996), attractiveness can be translated as the measure of a place’s force of attraction, by the total of flows attracted by that place. At the same time, the attraction of a place upon a space, more or less extended, heterogeneous, which depends on the centre, is called polarization. The centre exerts upon space a magnetization which is proportional with its activities, its population or its equipment. In a second acception, attraction accompanies the pole’s enclosing in the development of a regional assembly. Perroux F. (1955) considers selective sectorial investments have as a result the multiplying of growth, and Boudeville R. (1972) developed this theory at regional level by means of interindustrial exchanges. Pumain D. (1996) considers centrality is a fundamental characteristic, which can explain the forming of urban agglomerations by aggregation. The increase of central functions of a settlement leads to agglomeration and secondary centres, or even to new centres within a region. A fundamental hypothesis of Cristaller’s theory of central places, aggregation is a process of the realignment of people or activities in a limited area, but also of realignment of services and equipments of the same size, in order to form the same functional level. Aggregation implies the existence of some ressemblances or interest communities between nearby people or objects, which are intensified by interactions allowing proximity. In the opinion of geographers Polese M. (1955) and Monet J. (1988), centrality appears as a concentration in a strategic place of actors and activities related to accessibility, lowest transfer costs, agglomeration advantages, information richness, but also as a concentration of some intense and varied sociability forms. Thus, besides a well-known economic dimension, centrality has polyvalent dimensions: political, social,